Unlike most of the more recent sequels in the original Child’s Play franchise, Lars Klevberg’s Child’s Play is aiming to be a bit darker, scarier and more serious, and producer Seth Grahame-Smith teases what we can expect from the movie in a new chat with Cinema Blend.
For starters, it’s definitely going to be a rated “R” affair.
“We sort of lean into more of the AI/Kaslan story and hint at a Chucky that is driven by something different than he is in the original series, when he’s Charles Lee Ray and he’s just a truly psychopathic killer in the body of a doll. [Also, there is] the mother/son story, the emotional component of the movie, which I feel like the movie really delivers,” Grahame-Smith told the site. “And then above all that, just the intensity, the gore, the fact that the movie is rated R, that it really does go there when it goes there. I think the movie looks big, is much bigger than a lot of movies that are our size – very affordable movie, we are. But we had big ambitions. Those are, I’d say, the primary things we’re going for.”
He continued, “It starts out… very sweet. It’s two characters in Chucky and in Andy that both in their own ways… [have] been rejected. Andy is certainly in need of a friend, and finds one in Chucky. We wanted to sort of lean into that this is a relationship that is genuine that goes off the rails in a big way. It’s not just brooding, and it’s not sinister from the jump. It gets there, for sure, but that I think just gets to the heart of what we’re trying to do here, and why we felt like there was a why and a cultural relevance to doing a different version of this classic series.”
“We knew that one of the differences we wanted to do here was to ultimately put more pressure on kids having to do this than in the original movie where it’s Karen and Detective Mike, primarily Detective Mike, hunting this [doll] down.”
In Klevberg’s modern take on the horror classic, a mother (Aubrey Plaza) gives her son (Gabriel Bateman) a Buddi doll for his birthday, unaware of its more sinister nature.
Mark Hamill is the new voice of Chucky.
The cast also includes Beatrice Kitsos, Ty Consiglio and Brian Tyree Henry.
Klevberg directed from Tyler Burton Smith’s (Kung Fury) screenplay.
Child’s Play slashes its way to theaters on June 21, 2019.
